PR Communications’ Strategic Importance To Enterprise Social Media
Shel Holtz mulls over the debate about where social media should reside in the enterprise.
Reviewing the idea that specialists are no longer needed for social media, he discussed the argument that specialists are not needed as more people become technologically savvy, and most social media is not that difficult to use technically, ordinary employees will be able to excel at using social media. Rather Shel suggests the technology might be easier to use, but you need a set of communications skills to be a success in social media.
Shel thought there was a need for experts on social media communications and culture, this quote makes the point well, "there’s a big difference between a group of people having a conversation in a Facebook forum and an organization communicating appropriately in multiple social media channels in order to achieve specific, measurable business objectives."
He also discussed the issue of company wide encouragement and adoption of social media. Many larger companies have used this tactic to some good effects; Shel described the example of IBM where over 4,000 employees are blogging. However, that number is out of 300,000 employees. The point here is that not everyone wants to blog or get involved with social media, and that companies should not leave "organizational communication," to chance, yes a company might strike lucky, but in today's world a company has to plan for "the organization's official engagement."
Shel went onto to suggest organizational communications with social media should not be left to IT, as technology skills while important in social media not as important as content and communications skills.
His discussion regarding PR and the use of social media was particularly good, especially from Shel Holtz, who is an industry veteran of such high standing in the community. PR has a role to play, but for some companies, depending on the critical requirements of customers, in the case of Comcast - customer service, PR is not as important.
Shel gives a list of 17 responsibilities that the social media specialist or generalist will be responsible for; including, "Monitoring the social media space in order to identify new channels and alert the organization to the implications of those channels (e.g., the need to claim key trademark names for Friendfeed rooms before somebody brandjacks your identities)"
Great post Shel, one that adds to the body of research because of your thoughtfulness about PR and communications as it relates to social media.
I’d also suggest to the reader to check out the comments section on this great post, Scott Monty’s comments about conductors within enterprise social media provides some great imagery.
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As a follow on to this post I’ve also written a few articles that cover some of the same issues.
Growing Social Media Marketing
